Hiking shoes: Our recent buys, photos and review
My wife modeling her new Salewa Alpenrose Women's Mid GTX Hiking Boots
Q: What do you do when your wife is more into fashion then she is hiking?
A: You buy her a pair of fashionable hiking shoes!
Did it work? Did I get my wife out on a hike? Well yes, two short hikes in 2020. Haha. One of those hikes was when we took the photo up top.
My current go-to mountaineering boot is the Salewa Crow GTX. They have a unique look which must have been attractive to my wife’s eye because when I asked her to look at trail shoes with me the first thing she asked was ‘What brand are those mountain boots you got??’. And that’s how we ended up with her new pair!
The Salewa Alpenrose is a very lightweight, flexible, all-around hiking shoe. The Gore-Tex helps keep feet dry, and the soles have good traction. Since we got a women’s size 6.5, I obviously haven’t worn them myself but I would say they are a great option for a lot of trail hikes.
Oh and they model pretty well too
Continuation of my endless search for a trail runner shoe that fits…
I guess I have awkward shaped feet. I think I’ve known that since at least highschool when the only shoes I wanted to wear were skate shoe brands like DC Shoe Co, Osiris, and Etnies. They were wider and I didn’t have to lace them up tight.
In more recent years I have been learning more about my feet as I need shoes of various sorts for hiking in various terrain. The skate shoes don’t really cut it any more.
Salomon Speedcross 5
An all-around hiking boot also hasn’t been a great option for many of my hiking objectives in 2020. When on more technical terrain specifically made shoes (mountaineering boots and approach shoes, to name a few) become a must, but those shoes can be very uncomfortable to wear when there is a long trail to get there and back.
That’s where a trail runner shoe shines.
New Balance Nitrel v4 trail runner
When people think of a hiking shoe the first brand that comes to mind is probably not New Balance. In fact I tried dozens of other outdoor shoe brands before I got to these. But I’m glad that I did.
They make them in 3 different widths, D, EE, and 4E. So for me, 4E it was. My little toe isn’t squished underneath the other toes and the width of the mid shoe is also wide enough for me. My heels are small in comparison and the heel of this shoe works okay for me. I have worn the 10.5 4E’s on a few hikes and around town as well. I may end getting another pair in 10 4E since my heel swings a bit.
I was pretty happy about how the colors matched with The North Face Venture 2 jacket I picked up recently!
Salomon Speedcross, on the other hand, is a brand and a shoe model that I have tried on several times in the stores and basically given up on because of the narrow fit. But I did find that they do make a wide version that I could order on the internet. I really wanted it to work.
Despite these “wide” shoes being too tight on my metatarsal bones while having at least 2 inches of room length-wise, I contemplated keeping them just because I love how they are made and just looking at them. lol. But as they are of no actual use on my feet, I took a few photos before packaging them back up for the return.
